An Alternative Nature – Exploring Art, Society and Environment

Interview with Alexander Johannes Heil

As part of UR’s intersectionality campaign, we’ve embarked on a journey to gather stories from individuals with different cultural and professional backgrounds – shedding light on different perspectives to advocate for a deeper connection and management of our environment. Throughout these storytellings we explore different environmental and societal themes, unpacking their significance in personal and professional contexts. We aim to spark resonance within you, offering new perspectives and ways of thinking about the challenges we face around us. 

In this storytelling, UR invited Alexander Johannes Heil, a German artist and architectural designer based in The Hague. Here we had the opportunity to delve into his work and his experience of environmental and societal challenges through his artistic lens. 

His work consistently features vivid representations of nature, prompting us to explore his expressions of reality through his artistic vision. Alexander’s interdisciplinary collaborations further piqued our curiosity, compelling us to delve deeper into understanding both the artist and the profound resonance of his creations.

This interview addresses how nature is represented in everyday media and art, examining the pivotal role of art in tackling societal challenges and touching upon how interdisciplinary collaborations can provide new insights and perspectives. Last, we uncover participative artwork and unexpected, impactful outcomes, often leaving a profound impression on even the creators themselves.

Role of Nature in Alexander’s Childhood

How would you describe your relation to nature and what role did nature play in your childhood?

“I think I am in nature all the time. Even in my home nature is penetrating the walls and manifests itself inside in the form of insects like mosquitoes, flies or spiders – not to mention bacteria and other living tiny organisms living in our homes and even bodies. So in a sense, I think everything is nature. 

Nature always played a big role in my life. I was always fascinated by all kinds of animals and I was often busy trying to catch them and building homes for them. At first in my room in our apartment in the city, and later in our garden after moving out of the city. I convinced my parents to build a pond in the garden to have frogs and other animals. I went to a small creek nearby to collect small fish to put in the pond. However, I was and still am quite allergic, but it never stopped me from playing in cornfields or roaming the forest undergrowth. For me, it was apparently more important to go there than to suffer from the allergy.“

In many of his artworks, nature plays a prominent role. As Alexander explains, nature has fascinated him and has been a source of inspiration since before his career as an artist. During his thesis for his Bachelor’s in architecture at Technische Universität Berlin, he explored the analogies between architecture and nature. He further develops on this theme throughout his artistic career, in which he tries to challenge our perception of the everyday world around us. 

My works are always the result of spatial explorations, observations and my subjective conclusions. I want to challenge my and your everyday perception of reality. I do this by showcasing analogies between phenomena I encounter and by building narratives. For example, between the shape of a tree branch, a cave carved by water or the flames I observe in a fireplace. To me, they all seem to follow a similar pattern in manifesting their shape and that makes me ultimately curious. So what I want to achieve is a shared fascination, rather than an explanation or conclusion to act upon. I like challenging the perception of the everyday reality. Seeing ordinary things differently.

Representation of nature in art and media

In our conversation we also discussed how Alexander’s conception and representation of nature in his work are opposed to the way nature is often represented in everyday media:  

“I think that we competitively interact with nature. We have the notion of human vs nature. That became very visible during the pandemic and our ‘war’ against the virus or now in the enhanced efforts of ‘fighting’ climate change. There is always the act of humanising nature and suggesting a notion of a plan or agent in nature against humankind. But a virus is just reacting to what it touches. And the images I see on the news are nurturing this image of danger and disaster. It feels a bit like a mantra without a solution.

We are confronted with issues like deforestation, drought and floods and this is all super dangerous. We know that and we don’t have to hear that all the time. But what’s the solution? That’s the question. I don’t have a solution, but I believe that there could be solutions. So I hope that there’s a possibility to be more in sync with nature and react to it rather than continuously framing it as a threat. I hope to contribute to directing our gaze to an alternative notion of nature. One in which we see ourselves more integrated instead of opposite to nature.”

Alexander also mentions a trend he observes in the art when it comes to the representation of nature and addressing environmental and societal themes: 

“At the moment, what I see in the arts and also in the media is exactly the opposite.
It’s aestheticizing the horror scandal by showing the beauty of a deserted landscape or devastated land. Edward Burtynsky, a quite famous Canadian photographer, for instance, made a series of beautiful images depicting landscapes destroyed mostly by humans, via industrial practices. He plays with the beauty of that destruction. So what I see is an aestheticization of pollution and destruction in the arts. These aesthetics can be found in other media too and are now a fashionable approach to point out problems. However, it’s tricky, I would say because you produce artwork which profits from this destruction. And the people who make the artworks are not the people who are affected by the destruction.”

The role of art in addressing societal challenges

As Alexander points out, both in media and in the arts there is always a certain way of ‘framing’ nature. This representation of nature can be experimented with and played with in art and challenge existing views on nature. Therefore the question that followed was, How do you think artists can play a role in addressing larger societal issues, for example, by challenging how people view human nature relations?

“I think it is the task of the artist to show things differently. I always like to say that the actual thing can never be the artwork. It has to be altered. There are of course also ready-made works in art history, but even those are recontextualized or turned around, like the ‘Fountain’ by Duchamp or ‘Ceci n’est pas une pipe’ by Magritte. And I think this is what it is about, that you look at an artwork and it makes you think. This is the basic achievement you should have as an artist. It can start a conversation about the artwork, the world and how we perceive it. Eventually, we will always have to challenge our narratives, otherwise, nothing will change.”

In our conversation, we discussed one of Alexander’s thought-provoking works in more detail, his work ‘New Horizons’. For his creations, he visits the places he is interested in, collecting video, audio and other materials to later combine them into narrative collages.

“The work shows the sea and a series of wind power plants on the horizon. The sound is a field recording from the rigging of boats lying on that beach, recorded with a very high resolution and then very stretched,or slowed down. So we build all these wind power plants, which is also a good thing, but in an instagram post from the World Economic Forum it is pointed out that the rotors only last 20 to 25 years and are not recyclable. Thus, they already presented some solutions for reusing them in different ways, but there is a lot of uncertainty around what this solution will look like. This is also what I wanted to transcend with the work New Horizons. We will never know what lies beyond the figurative horizon which is the future. At the moment there’s a lot of suspense, just like in the video, and we will have to see if the decisions we make today will be for the better or the worse in the future.“

The artwork is accompanied by a written piece of text, from which we extracted a few phrases: “The world is not in our hands, and we will not change the course of history, as we have thought earlier. The fate of this planet is not in the hands of a few or small groups of individuals sharing the same interests either.” Can you elaborate on this quote?

“This text is based on the idea that we are all human, similar in nature, but at the same time we are all different as we live our individual lives. Sometimes I’m sitting by my window and I realise that there are 7 billion people out there who all have their agenda for this day. Still, when we talk about global problems, like climate change or a pandemic, for instance, we always talk about “we”. We use the word “we”, which I find very interesting because I don’t feel that “we” are “we”. There are a lot of “we’s” out there and there are many “I’s”. So in fact this is a reflection on how we use language. Using this specific language and always talking about “we” is misleading, because it gives us the feeling that we are all working on ‘our’ global problems. Actually, many people really don’t care and make it even worse. The quote “it’s not in our hands” relates to exactly this. This notion of “we” and the feeling that everybody is working on, for instance, climate change, also transcends the message that basically I don’t have to do anything because everybody is already working on it”

Collaboration and interdisciplinarity

Besides working on his individual artwork, Alexander collaborates with other artists, engaging in co-creation. For instance, once a year, Alexander and his sister Katherina Heil organise a collaborative experiment with participants from other disciplines. In this project, the Sensory Threshold LAB, art is used as a way of exploring the world by creating thought-provoking experiences and opportunities to learn and reflect together on a chosen theme. In this light, we discussed the role and importance of interdisciplinarity in the arts and in addressing wider societal themes.

“I  think interdisciplinarity is important to make progress faster. Because if there are only artists, they will always think in their patterns, even if they also tackle environmental topics. The same goes for biologists or meteorologists, who can maybe be inspired by an artist’s approach. When you talk with somebody from another field, you will always be challenged by their different ways of thinking about a topic or approaching a certain theme. We hope to develop this more and more in the Sensory Threshold LAB. By involving more practitioners from any field, not only academia and artists but also other professions. A construction worker, for instance, is confronted with completely different problems concerning climate change, than, say, an architect. Therefore, it is always important to make connections between different professions to exchange and learn from each other.”

Curated by Katherina Heil, Alexander Heil, Rik Möhlmann – Interdisciplinary Art Project at De Fabriek Eindhoven, 2021

Substanzraum – a particularly meaningful project

Lastly, during the interview, Alexander touched upon an inspiring experience during one of his projects, when he answered the question: What artwork or project that you have worked on in the past years is especially meaningful to you?

This clearly is the Substanzraum project. In this work, I filled a classicist building with water, so it became a reflecting pond. Initially, the idea was to show the waves you create when you walk in the water to make you aware that these waves are also in the air, but are invisible because our eyes are not adapted to see them in this medium. What I loved about the work is that people just enjoyed it so much, walking in it, splashing the water, and just being there together without really doing anything. I didn’t plan on that. That’s why I love this work a lot and I hope to produce more installations that create the same atmosphere of just being together, aware and attentive to the moment and what surrounds us – a ‘Being’ in opposition to a mere existence.

With this insightful comment, we concluded our interview with Alexander. UR takes inspiration from this enriching exchange, taking away pertinent discussion points on his perception and expression of human relations with environmental and social challenges. The interview has sparked meaningful conversations on relevant topics related to the representation of nature, how art can play a role in facing present-day challenges and the importance of collaboration beyond disciplinary borders.

Our exchange prompted reflection on the profound influence of language and everyday media in shaping our views of the natural world while acknowledging art’s capacity to challenge these norms. It became evident that art, with its transformative power, possesses the ability to challenge and reshape these established norms. This recognition reiterates the crucial role of interdisciplinary collaboration, emphasising how the convergence between individuals with different professional and personal backgrounds can foster new collective insights. This discussion served as a reminder of art’s remarkable ability to initiate conversations and connect people by bringing them together in the present moment.

We want to thank Alexander Johannes Heil for this meaningful exchange, his openness, and his willingness to share his thoughts and experiences with United Rising.

Learn more at:

Alexander Johannes Heil
Alexander Johannes Heil (@alexanderjheil)
Sensory Threshold LAB